After releasing a new Kernel version, Linus Torvalds needed a few days of rest to put some remaining patches into the next release. The so-called merge window has closed, with the 2.6.33 branch now open.

Among the important changes to Kernel 2.6.33 to appear early in 2010 is undoubtedly the Nouveau driver for NVIDIA graphics cards, closely followed by changes to the complete graphics stack. The Btrfs filesystem will also undergo some improvements in the new kernel.

Next to these changes are detailed improvements ranging from ALSA drivers over wireless to the new USB 3.0. The complete changelog is available.

Kernel developer and Novell coworker Greg Kroah-Hartman manages new drivers in a separate tree for the Linux drivers project. He most recently reported that a few projects will have to depart from Kernel 2.6.33, among them also Google.